Do you give yourself the right to be amazing or do you settle for being average? Until recently, I settled for the latter, but last week, a truly phenomenal thing happened, caused by nothing else but a shift in my attitude towards myself.

I have never been good at bowling – I usually come last or second to last in any game I play. I get one strike per game and usually by sheer chance. I do not know how to control the ball nor how to control the force with which I throw it. Being good at bowling has always been a mystery to me.

However…

Last week I went bowling with a group of fifteen friends and on my first go a thought popped into my head “You have the right to be amazing. You have the right to win. Get a strike!”.

And guess what? I got a strike. So, on every go I said to myself “Give yourself the right to be amazing. Give yourself the right to win”.

And guess what? I didn’t get just one strike, not even two, not even three. I got enough strikes to make me win out of the group of fifteen people!

How do you explain the fact that a girl who has never won a game of bowling in her life got double the points of most of the other players?

For me, there is only one explanation for this: I gave myself the right to it.

I allowed myself to be great. I allowed myself to excel. I allowed myself to come first. I allowed myself to win.

A shift in my attitude towards what I have the right to be and to do caused a small miracle. I changed my thoughts from “I’m not good at bowling” to “I can be amazing”. And instantly my body replied to this affirmation by acting it out!

This was an amazing discovery for me – nothing could have been clearer proof of how our thoughts change our reality.

Have you ever noticed a very significant change in your reality following a change of attitude?

When talking to friends or family, the two things I am most embarrassed to admit is wanting to take my time and wanting to think things through. If I tell them that I’m not completely fulfilled with an aspect of my life, their reaction is that I should do something to change it NOW. However, I have often felt resistance to this, feeling, instead, that in some situations I would prefer to observe, rather than act.

I am currently looking for a new professional opportunity and it is likely that I will move to a new city for it. In reaction to this situation, my family members are all telling me that I need to act quickly and make a decision very soon because “time is flying past, and before you know it you will be old/poor/unemployable/insert other unrealistic catastrophic situations”. As soon as I hear them telling me this, my chest tightens and I am immediately filled with stress. I am not ready to act now, because I do not yet know the best decision for myself. If I am to change my whole life and move to another city or country again, I want to make sure that it is for the best of reasons.

When I tell my family that “I need time to think things through”, I get the equally stress-provoking question “Well, how long do you think you’ll be thinking about this?”, as if we could put a time limit to deciding the best path for our future, in the same way that we can predict how long it will take us to wash the dishes or take a shower. In my current situation, it’s not so much the fact of having to make a change that is stressful, but the fact that the people close to me are expecting me to make a good (in their opinion) change very quickly.

I have never been advised to take my time and think things through thoroughly and so I have always felt like there was something ‘wrong’ with me when I was reluctant to take immediate action in a situation. I was therefore extremely relieved when I heard Jean Haner telling Nancy Levin, in an interview at the Hay House World Summit, that for her this was a year for planning and thinking, rather than change. This was the first time I had heard somebody advising someone else TO TAKE THEIR TIME. And I suddenly realised that it is ok for us to be still, it is ok for us to think things out and do things calmly. This revelation, this confirmation of my own beliefs, changed my whole attitude to my current life situation.

Yes, there are certain aspects of my life that I would like to change SOON, but NOW I will take my time to think through these changes and to find the best solution for myself. I will allow myself silence and stillness, to listen to what I truly want, rather than precipitating towards what I think I should be doing. And I will say, happily and confidently, to anyone who asks about how things are developing that “I’m taking the time to think things through”.

“I’ve never seen this before”, I thought to myself as I looked out of my kitchen window. For the first time in a year I saw a group of tall trees, flexible like ballerinas, swaying their fragile limbs to the rhythm of the wind. In the morning sun their leaves were shaking with excitement and drops of dew were shimmering in the soft light.

A deep sense of peace came over me as I watched them wave their branches playfully to the skies.

“Why have I not noticed them before?” I asked myself, surprised and disappointed.

The answer was simple enough – I had never looked out of the window from this angle. For the first time in a year, I decided to lean on the kitchen cupboard while drinking my coffee, putting me at a diagonal to the window and changing the view that I was used to seeing.

A small change of perspective and everything looked different – even the things that I have looked at several thousands of times before now took on a different meaning.